Insight

It was nothing like the others, the monstrous Verrazano Narrows, at the start, not nearly as steep as the Pulaski between Brooklyn and Queens, not anything as long or dark and foreboding as the Queensboro that first took us into Manhattan.

Those, however, all came earlier, at Mile 1, and Mile 13 and Mile 15. This thing, this mini-Mount Everest, was at Mile 20.

It was along about here when I started to wonder if I would finish the New York City Marathon, my first ever. Every fiber of my body from the waist down was screaming, withering in pain. My knee caps felt as though someone had hit them with a hammer. The pain in my knees was almost bringing tears to my eyes. My ankles felt like ice picks were prodding them. The top of my right foot had developed some sort of stress fracture, something akin to getting hit with an ax.

That is a tasting of the physical.

The mental was thus: From the Willis, across the Bronx and down Fifth Avenue through Harlem, the victims started to pile up; the exhausted, the cramped, the sick. Just shy of Mile 24, when we started winding our way through Central Park — along about the time I came up on a few grown men passed out — I began wondering why I had decided to do it at all.

Other mental mountains had been there all along, even before the start when I was thinking about the daunting 26.2 miles that lay ahead, the long stretches through Brooklyn and Manhattan, the bridges.

I finished, and afterward I felt a bit like Lance Armstrong, also a first-timer, who said at a post-race press conference that, “I can tell you, 20 years of pro sports, endurance sports, from triathalons to cycling, all of the Tours — even the worst days on the Tours — nothing left me feeling the way I feel now in terms of sheer fatigue and soreness.”

Yet, I will to do it again. I bet he will too.

So what's my problem? Why would anyone subject themselves to such torture? The training is bad enough, with 35 to 40 miles in a week pretty standard as race day draws near, injuries aplenty, and many is the time when the alarm clock goes off at 4:30 or 5 a.m.

Getting in good shape is certainly a motivator. Helps keep you fit. Keeping trim, however, isn't always the motivator. Rather it can be much more psychological.

I shared a cab with a psychologist from Chicago on race morning. As we were on our way to the New York Public Library where we would catch shuttle buses to the starting line on Staten Island, I took the opportunity to probe the question a little.

This was his second New York Marathon but he had run about a dozen in all.

“Some people have a yearning to break out of the ordinary,' he said. “I suppose I am one of them.”

He fiddled with some belongings in his beat-up gym bag for a moment before saying, “Our lives can get so predictable. I have a routine, it's nice, but I need to step out of it regularly. I just need that.”

Others insist it is instinctive.

“Aside from health, the main drive to take on a marathon goes back to our genetic makeup,” says Will Dillard, a professional coach in the Atlanta area who works with marathoners and tri-athletes and so-called ultra-marathoners.

Dillard believes that instinct drives that desire to go more than 26 miles. That our ancient ancestors had to push themselves to the brink each day just to survive and some of that is still with us today.

“Our lives have become more comfortable,” he said. “We don't have to worry about where our next meal is coming from. But something inside of us still wants to know if we can survive if confronted with that kind of challenge. It wants to find out.”

Modern-day life, as Dillard sees it, has sucked up most physical challenges and, sometimes, goals. A good day at the office is OK, but it doesn't rise to the same level as physical survival.

“Normal life in today's world,” he said, “it doesn't provide us with these challenges or these goals. So we go out and make them up, we find ways of getting there, of satisfying that ancient, inner need.”

Roy Benson feels much the same way. He's a former cross-country coach at the University of Florida. Today he works on an individual basis with marathon and ultra-marathon runners who are trying to get their times down.

“It [running a marathon] is a totally unnatural act,” said Benson, “and that is why people want to do it. It satisfies that desire people have for a challenge.”

The human body, Benson explained, is designed to take you on a run of only 20 miles. After that, you begin to run low on glycogen, a substance stored in the muscles and the liver that is derived from carbohydrates. It is the primary fuel of the muscles and when it runs out, typically around Mile 20, the body starts burning fat cells, a physiological event that can bring on mental and physical stress.

Making it though that event, or climbing over the wall, as some runners refer to it, is precisely what attracts some to the marathon.

Benson says he sees an extreme of this in ultra-marathoners, people who will run races in places such as Death Valley, Calif., or in events such as the Western States Endurance Run in which participants endure a race of more than 24 hours, across 100 miles over mountains that rise higher than 15,000 feet.

“There is a certain personality type that is drawn to such a thing,” he said. “They like to stare down death.”

Benson has also noticed that in recent years more ordinary people have joined marathons, in part, he believes, because of efforts to raise money for worthy causes.

This was certainly part of my motivation. With the support of this newspaper and its publisher, I raised money for the Thomas Labrecque Foundation, which supports lung cancer research. So when I ran, I wasn't only running for myself, but for the people at The Star, past, current and future victims of the disease, including my father who died of it in the 1980s.

That was certainly an additional motivator. I didn't want to let anyone down.

While some, such as ultra-marathoners, run to get closer to death, others do it to edge closer to God.

Steve McGehee, an Atlanta banker and a frequent marathoner, leads a running group every Saturday through the city. He alters frequently, but always tries to lead the group into blighted and neglected areas, through dark underpasses, past poverty-stricken neighborhoods.

Understanding where the needs are and what they are is an essential part of the way he and his group worships.

Running through the city, being out in the elements can be, he says, a wonderfully spiritual experience.

“Every Saturday morning, as our running group traverses ... Midtown Atlanta, I have become increasingly aware of the way the natural world responds to our presence: The rain sometimes stops, allowing us just enough time to get in that one-hour run; ... high-definition sunshine somehow helps us see all things — physical and metaphysical — more clearly, thus enhancing our perception of ourselves and making real the presence of the Eternal in our lives. Morning running is morning prayer. There's no question about it.”

Last Sunday, about an hour before race time in New York, when most everyone was experiencing high anxiety, the organizers of the New York Marathon held an ecumenical service near the start line.

During that service a Methodist minister from the New York area urged everyone to pray during the race, for themselves, yes. But she also urged them to go deeper.

“Pray for this city,” she said, “and for all of you who come from far-away lands, know and understand that this is our Jerusalem. Pray for this city, for your people are here.”

It was a very sweet moment, one that kept coming back to me during the race when I would go for long periods of time without ever hearing a flat-American accent, when I would pass by roaring crowds in Brooklyn, by blaring high school bands in Queens, in front of Hip-Hop bands in The Bronx and through people of the world in Central Park.

In the end, I ran for myself, for my dad, for my family, for The Anniston Star and for the challenge, but I also ran for this city, to be part of its loving embrace, to enter into its cradle, where tens of thousands welcomed me as one of their own.

If only for a day.